


In from the Cold

by alphahelices



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-03-08 00:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18884569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphahelices/pseuds/alphahelices
Summary: His eyes are closed and he is breathing hard and then he feels her reach up to gently smooth his hair back from the slickness of his forehead. They don’t speak of it, but he remembers, even after the pain is gone.





	1. Chapter 1

                Once in a while, she catches his eye on the battlefield.

                He ducks for cover, pausing to reload, and sees her tucked behind the wall next to him. She is folded in on herself like something waiting. She breathes deep, and then unfolds like a wave, and leans over the wall and fires. She is down again before the shots land, but instead of returning fire all he hears is the sound of dropping bodies. It is silent for a moment, and then she laughs, loud and stuttering, like gunfire.

                She catches him looking, and she smiles, her teeth like bullets. She says _keep moving, lieutenant._ And he does.

* * *

 

                She visits him in the lower decks of the Normandy sometimes. He tells her too much about himself, but she listens and doesn’t judge him. Some nights, they talk for hours.

                After a few times, she starts to stand a little closer, speak a little softer. She smiles more, small quirks of the corner of her mouth, something easy and relaxed. It feels comfortable, having her there.

                But when she leaves, she says _we’ll talk later—_ and then, deliberately— _lieutenant._ A reminder.

                And he says _all right, Commander_ , and watches her go, and tries to quiet the pounding of his heart.

* * *

 

                When the headaches send him to the med bay, she visits him. She sits beside him in the dimmed lights and tells him the absolute worst jokes he’s ever heard. It helps.

                Once, the pain is so bad his face is a river of sweat and every sound aches. Still she sits beside him, in silence now. His eyes are closed and he is breathing hard and then he feels her reach up to gently smooth his hair back from the slickness of his forehead.

                They don’t speak of it, but he remembers, even after the pain is gone.

* * *

 

                He sees her falter for the first time on Virmire. At the same time, they both realize, it’s him or Ashley. He sees her shaken, for the first time, sees the calculations running in her mind on repeat and coming up short every time.

                He sees the way she looks at him, as she drags him toward the Normandy, like he is a burden and a treasure all at once. And he thinks, _shit, it’s real now_.

                Later, he confesses to her that he feels responsible for Ashley’s death. _Because of us_ , he says, and then he hears his own words echo and wonders if there even is any kind of _us_.

                Stiffly, she comforts him, and promises it is not his fault. She says nothing about _us_. When he leaves, dreaming of his bunk, she calls after him _goodnight_ —a pause— _lieutenant._

                He is weak and tired and almost calls her by her name, before he catches himself.

                _Goodnight, Commander._

* * *

 

She runs, a lot. Something about maintaining muscle strength and bone density in the vacuum of space. There’s a treadmill on the shuttle deck, and her feet pound the rubber track for mile after mile, sometimes for hours. It’s usually early in what passes for morning on their warship, and usually she has the deck to herself.

                He finds this out for the first time a few days after Virmire. He can’t sleep, thinking of Saren and Ashley and that stupid, stupid _us_ he let slip after. He wanders the ship in his pajamas, relishing the quiet hum of the engines and the eerie emptiness as the rest of the crew sleeps. Finally, he heads for the elevator to return to the crew deck.

                The doors slide open, and she is inside, heading back to her cabin after a treadmill session. She’s sweating, droplets on her forehead and dripping off her chin, and her hair is falling out of a loose ponytail.

                They both startle, not expecting another person out of bed at this hour. And then she laughs, breathy and awkward, and he does too, and steps into the elevator. The doors slip closed, and the elevator starts to move with a hum.

                They both try not to look at each other, him in his plaid pajama pants and her dripping sweat on the floor, and then he gives in and looks anyway. Her cheeks are flushed. It makes her freckles stand out; he’s never noticed them before. She looks younger, he thinks, and wonders just how young she is.

                She catches him looking and smiles back, tired and distracted. They stand close in the little elevator. She is shorter than him in her running flats, and he can feel her breath hot on his skin.

                And she says, under her breath, _lieutenant—_

                He wants to kiss her, right there, taste the salt on her lips and feel the heat of the blood in her cheeks. But he hesitates, and the elevator chimes, and the doors slide open on the crew deck.

                So he says only, _Commander._ A husky whisper.

                And then he steps off the elevator, feeling her eyes on his back until the doors whisper closed.

* * *

 

                The night before Ilos, after reapers and mutinies, he walks into her quarters and is surprised to see her looking calm.

                He starts to call her _Commander_ , and then she reminds him. _I’m not your Commander anymore_ —she smiles, just a little— _Kaidan._

His name on her lips sounds like rebellion, and he is across the room and kissing her in an instant. His hands are in her hair and her fingers are under his clothes and for once she doesn’t smell like gunsmoke, even as he breathes hard and deep against her skin.


	2. Chapter 2

                Somewhere after the battle for the citadel and the award ceremonies and heaps of praise, he starts to daydream more about Vancouver and his parents’ orchard. He thinks of taking Shepard to pick apples in the old stand of apple trees far from the house. The apples are tiny and full of worms and not much good for eating, but they can almost see the ocean over the horizon, and when the sun starts to set the bats fly by with the soft flapping of their leathery wings.

                He sits on the crew deck, and he thinks about backing her up against the skinny trunks of the old apple trees and kissing her beneath the flaming sky at dusk.

                And then Cerberus comes out of nowhere, and missiles start hitting the Normandy, and he is on an escape pod without her. Through the windows, he watches the frigate collapse into a fireball. The blood pounds in his ears too loudly for him to hear the voices of the others around him, but he doesn’t have to hear their exclamations to know that Shepard is dead.

* * *

 

                He is angry after, for a long time. He thinks of the empty seats on the escape pod and replays every second of the Normandy’s evacuation in his mind, imagining every instance where they could have moved faster, where he could have said something different, where some small action could have taken Shepard off the Normandy before the last of the missiles landed. In his dreams, he sees the warship crumble in the silence of space, flames licking at the last wisps of oxygen, no sound but his own heart racing.

                He wonders where in the ship she was when it finally tore apart. He wonders if it was fast. If she screamed, before the end, into the empty blackness.

                He watches her die in his dreams a hundred times before he gives up and asks for leave Earthside. The higher-ups grant it without question, and he shows up on his parents’ doorstep on a Wednesday evening without even knowing what to say. It takes him three and a half minutes to get up the nerve to knock.

                His mother answers, looking both surprised and worried, and all he can say is _Hi, mom_ —his throat clenches— _uh, my ship blew up._ But she has welcomed home her own military husband a dozen times and knows when to ask questions and when not to, so she brings him in and plies him with the cold leftovers of dinner and a colder beer. She pours herself a glass of wine, sits in silence, and waits for him to talk.

                He empties three bottles and picks at the better half of dinner before he finally heaves a sigh, and asks, _you’ve heard of Commander Shepard?_

                His mother nods, saying nothing, and then he is spilling stories of battlefields and late night conversations on the crew deck and the warmth of Shepard’s arms. He cries at his mother’s kitchen table in his childhood home on a tiny blue world in the corner of the galaxy, and she rubs his back and just says _oh, Kaidan,_ because no other words sound right.

* * *

 

                He stays for a week, helping his mother with the chores and pruning the grapevines that weave around the house. It is grueling physical work, but it tires him out enough to sleep at night. By the sixth day, he can say Shepard’s name without his throat tightening.

                In the evening on the last day, he walks out to the far stand of apple trees, alone. The apples are growing fat and happy in the sunshine, the worms within fatter and happier. The sun sets, and the bats come out, flitting by on their soft wings, and he tells himself that if he squints he can see the ocean beyond the hills.

* * *

                He throws himself back into work, taking every mission offered to him. One by one, the pieces of his life come back together. Eventually, he can sleep every night without dreaming of burning space ships and empty escape pod seats. Without realizing it, he forgets what her voice sounded like.

                Sometimes, he dwells on it, angry with himself that a good day is a day he does not think about Shepard. The universe moves on and forgets about her and also about the reapers, and sometimes he stays up at night and tries to remember her, telling himself that someone needs to.

                But little by little, he forgets.

* * *

 

                A week goes by where he does not think of her, even once. He stops seeing her eyes in the face of every woman he passes. He calls other leaders _Commander_ without it feeling raw in his throat. He sleeps heavily, eats well, and he doesn’t even think _I am okay now_ , he just is.

                Then the rumors start to spread, about Shepard alive. Quiet rumors, lacking details, but persistent. Eventually, they reach him, when another soldier asks him idly if he believes his old commander is alive.

                He thinks of the way the Normandy shook when the missiles landed, and sobbing until his chest ached at his mother’s kitchen table. And he tells himself, _Shepard is dead. She has to be._

                That is the end of it, then. He does not linger or wonder or hope.

* * *

                That night, the nightmares come back. In dreams, he sits in the escape pod drifting across space and watches the Normandy fall part under heavy fire, watches it splinter and fracture and shatter into pieces, like in a hundred dreams before. Only this time, he is screaming that they have to go back, that they have to save Shepard, that she is not dead.

                He wakes with her name on his lips.

                In the morning, he reminds himself _Shepard is dead_ , and he accepts a new mission to protect a human colony on Horizon.

               


	3. Chapter 3

                At first, he tells himself he is still out of sorts from the collector attack. It must be the adrenaline, or the exhaustion. _There’s a million reasons,_ he tells himself, _why I am hearing the voice of a dead woman._

                And then he turns a corner and Shepard is standing there, whole and alive, arguing with a colonist. He blinks, doubting his eyes, but his heart is pounding and it is undeniable, _it’s Shepard it’s Shepard it’s Shepard_.

                He finds words to dismiss the angry colonist as he crosses the ground toward her. She stares back at him with wide eyes, and then she smiles, and she is in his arms and his face is in her hair. He’d forgotten she was just a little shorter. He’d forgotten the gunpowder smell of her skin after a battle, the way her breath sounds against his ear, the way she leans into him, the way she stands on her toes just a little to wrap her arms around him.

                He’s forgotten a lot, he realizes. She says _it’s been too long_ , and he realizes it’s been two years, _two years_ where she was alive but dead to him. Two years of nightmares and guilt and anxious calls from his mother asking if he’s doing better now. Two years of trying not to see her in every face on the street, two years of trying to remember and forget her all at the same time, two years she could have saved him from if he had only known she was alive _._

Before he knows it, he is pushing her away and yelling at her. And damn, it feels _good_. He watches her smile fade and sees her eyes start to tear up, and all he can think about is his own pain, his own _two years_.

                He calls her _traitor_ , and her eyes go dry and cold and her jaw sets and he knows he’s really hurt her now, and some nasty part of his mind is living for this and whispering, _she deserves to hurt_. She starts to fight back then, argue her own side, and he can barely even hear it because he just doesn’t want to listen.

                And then he turns to leave, and she has the nerve to offer him a position on her crew. The anger is gone from her voice, the sadness too, and now she is all Commander.

                He doesn’t even have to think before he turns her down.

* * *

 

                Somewhere around the fourth shot of whiskey in his quarters that night, the remorse hits him. He sends her a message he won’t remember in the morning and falls asleep in his armor, half-drowned in whiskey and self-loathing and the memory of her voice.

                In the morning, he finds the message he sent her, and plays it back. He listens to the whiskey sloshing in his own voice as he almost, _almost_ asks her to call him back. Even drunk, he can’t hope to be with her again.

                He isn’t surprised when she doesn’t return his message. Days pass and he forgets again, and it is easier the second time.

* * *

 

                The news channels play stories about the Omega 4 relay and Shepard on endless loops. He stays up too late and watches her face on the vid screens while the reporters call her renegade and hero all at once. And he thinks, _that’s my Commander_ , with a vague sense of pride. But he knows better now than to let himself call her late at night, and in the morning, he decides he knows better than to call her at all.

* * *

 

                Of all the places he’s dreamed of running into Shepard again, the interior of a sterile Alliance building on Earth is not one of them. He has a hard time imagining her anywhere but on battlefields, or hunched over the galaxy map on the Normandy, or in the overheated lower decks of the shuttle bay. Even in his mind, he can’t help but see her in dirty scuffed armor with a gun in her hand and that focused look on her face.

                He is startled to see her in the cold hallway, in street clothes and sneakers. Six months of Earth’s sun has brought out her freckles, and he tells himself, _she’s like a whole different person—_

He remembers yelling at her on Horizon. The drunken message she never returned. Every time he told himself it’s really over, picking himself up and telling himself to move on—

_It’s been years since Ilos,_ he reminds himself, one more time—

And then she smiles at him and calls him Major, and his heart beats faster, and he thinks—

                _Oh, shit_.


	4. Chapter 4

                They leave Earth together, and it’s the most surreal thing he’s ever been through. He watches the oceans slip away beneath them and the city skylines smoke and crumble and wonders if he’ll ever see this planet again.

                Somehow, they escape the reapers, and make it to Mars. They don’t speak much, but still it feels familiar to be at her side as they hunt down information and take out Cerberus troopers. He watches a little too intently as she kills the first of the Cerberus agents, and feels a sharp pang of regret for calling her traitor on Horizon months ago.

                She catches him staring, and says nothing, and he knows she is thinking of the same moment, back on Horizon.

                And then they find a Cerberus agent, transformed—nearly a husk—and in his disgust he finds himself lashing out at her again, asking if that is what she’s become. She is immediately defensive, and he tries to clarify, tries to ask if she’s still the Shepard from years ago, the Shepard he _loved_.

                There is a moment, a pause, where they both hear his words and realize that he has only ever said he loved her in the past tense. The moment passes, and she is changing the subject, teasing him for being stubborn. The tension eases. They relax, a little, and move on to the next task. She directs him into position, calls him _Major,_ and all he can do is say _yes Commander_.

                Together, they take out what feels like a small army of Cerberus soldiers. When they finally clear the area, he hears her laughing, like the old days, like gunfire.

                More enemies arrive and he keeps fighting, hoping to hear that easy laugh again. He fights better than he has in ages, right up until a synthetic gets a hold of him and nearly splits his skull and the dusty Martian surface turns to blackness before his eyes.

* * *

 

                She visits him in the hospital while the pain medicine still has him a little weak kneed and loose lipped. He tells her about his treatments and his batch of students and his family and, Christ, there isn’t much he doesn’t tell her. She’s listening and asking questions and smiling at him, and it has him feeling even lighter than the medicine does.

                Then she brings up Horizon, and he feels the tension trying to seep in at the corners, and some frantic part of his mind thinks that if he talks faster and says enough then somehow he’ll fill the uncomfortable pauses before they happen. He apologizes, says he hopes to move past it—remembers the sight of her standing in a gunsmoke haze on the red dust of Mars, a ghost, a legend, a commander—and he promises her he still cares.

                She says his name then, and he hears the hesitance in her voice, hears the pained silence start to sink in. Suddenly, though, he is out of words, and with nothing more to say before the tension sets in he just mumbles something about how he thought she should know.

                The silence comes. She sits with her shoulders hunched and stares at her own hands in her lap. He closes his eyes against the bright hospital lights and the hum of pain starting up again in the back of his skull. The buzz of the medicine is wearing off.

                The doctors come bustling in, then, and she stands to leave. Before she goes, she takes his hand in hers, just for a moment. He squeezes her fingers, and she squeezes back, and then he watches her go before the doctors slip him back into a painless fog.

* * *

 

                She visits him a few more times. He doesn’t say anything more about his feelings for her, and she doesn’t bring it up either. Instead they trade stories of their adventures from the past years. Sometimes, when the pain medicine starts to wear off, she tells him bad jokes just like old times in the med bay. There are no unwelcome silences anymore, and when she leaves him, she holds his hand for just a moment each time.

                Other visitors come too, after his skull starts to knit and the doctors ease him off the drugs. Councilman Udina offers to grant him Spectre status, casually promising him the glory of being the second ever human spectre. Still, it takes Kaidan days of thought and the encouragement of the original human spectre to accept.

                It’s not long after he’s out of the hospital that he’s looking down the barrel of his gun at his former commander. He’s imagined her a traitor and yet now, when a member of the council’s life is at stake, he can’t bring himself to distrust her. With an eerie detachment he turns his gun from Shepard to Udina, thinks _goddammit, has Shepard ever been wrong before,_ and fires.

                The C-sec officers come spilling out of the elevator behind them and, of course, Shepard was right. But she doesn’t gloat, instead she pulls him aside and asks if he is going to be okay. There’s a look of concern in her eyes, discreet but genuine, and it feels just like when he used to be laid low by headaches and she would comfort him on the crew deck. He looks her in the eye and tells her he’ll be fine, and he means it.

                And then he meets her at the docking bay, and tells her he’s ready to join her on the Normandy again.


	5. Chapter 5

                They do not talk as easily on the Normandy as they did in the hospital. Their mission is never-ending and the weight of the Reapers is heavy in each of their minds. Most days, they speak only of the last battle or the one coming next.

                Sometimes, she finds him on the observation deck, and they talk carefully about their fears. It is an intimate subject. Knowing that she only speaks of these things with him makes him feel the same as when she took his hand in the hospital. A squeeze of the fingers, a tiny comfort found together, watching the stars and endless worlds pass by the viewing window. Still, she is guarded, and they speak more deeply about his worries than they do about hers.

                He catches her looking, sometimes, on the decks of the Normandy. From time to time when the ship is quiet, she stares at him from across the room, thinking.

* * *

 

                The rest of the crew feels just as familiar, and it isn’t long before he settles into semi-regular poker matches with Vega and Garrus. He finds a different comfort on the green felt card table than he has with Shepard on the viewing deck; he and his crewmates drink heavily and talk boorishly about victories large and small as if they have no fear of anything. They bet small credits and pretend they are invincible, and it is nice to feel invincible when the whole universe seems out to kill him.

                Vega always gets the drunkest, and this night is no exception. He starts cracking jokes about Shepard, and before long he is trying to find out more about her from his crewmates, asking about all the little details she doesn’t share openly. _What’s her favorite food? How much medigel do you think she goes through? Have you ever seen her drunk?_

                Through a boozy, loose-jawed grin, _does she have a man back on the Citadel or Earth somewhere?_

                Kaidan is too drunk to stop himself from tensing, and Garrus sees it, and even under the tide of alcohol James notices the shift in mood. Kaidan stares at his cards and hopes the moment will pass, but James only turns to Garrus and asks him instead, _okay, what is this about?_

                Garrus looks at his own cards, sighs, and says _Kaidan and Shepard used to be together, before Cerberus._

                James just laughs, and says _shit_ , and focuses on his cards again. They play a hand speaking only in monosyllables, bet, raise, fold. Kaidan drinks a little more and tries to think about kings and queens and royal flushes instead of majors and commanders and the way her skin blushed beneath his fingers the night before Ilos.

                He wins a round, claims his chips, finishes a bottle. Garrus deals in a new round. And then James probes again, _you want her back?_

                Kaidan says _I fold,_ even though he doesn’t have cards in his hand yet. He pushes his chair back from the card table as James starts to tease and pry, _no, no, don’t be like that, come on._ Still Kaidan leaves, walking a little unevenly back to his quarters.

                In the morning, he and James share a pot of coffee and moan about their headaches together as if nothing had happened. But Kaidan remembers, despite the murmur of last night’s empty bottles, and the next time Shepard comes looking for him he asks her to meet him for dinner on the citadel. She agrees, and he says _I’m glad_.

* * *

 

                A million times since he came back aboard the Normandy, she’s stood close enough to him that he can feel the heat of her breath. She’s spilled her worries at his feet and listened while he agonizes over his own, day after day, on the observation deck. A dozen times, he’s sat close enough to her in the drop shuttle to smell the gunpowder and gore on her after a fierce battle.

                Still, he realizes, when he takes her hand in the restaurant on the citadel, that he hasn’t held her hand since the hospital after Mars. Even then, it was the briefest of moments before she stood to leave. Now, he takes her hand and he holds on, and she lets him, weaving her fingers through his. It is the closest they’ve been, he thinks, since before the Normandy exploded and Shepard died.

                It should be enough, after all these years, to hold some part of her and know she is alive. It should be enough to satisfy him. But it’s not, and before he knows it he’s asking if she still cares. She’s dodged the topic every time he’s brought it up, but now it’s a direct question, and he watches her sigh and look away from him. He watches her thinking and waits for the rejection and waits, hopelessly, for her to pull her hand from his.

                She doesn’t.

                Instead, she smiles at him—it is the first time he’s ever seen the legendary Commander Shepard looking _bashful_ —and she says _I love you_ , present tense, and he’s sure he’s never been this happy in his entire life. They rush their meal and make it as far as the airlock on the Normandy before he’s got her in his arms again, alive and whole, her lips on his and her arms pulling him close.

* * *

 

                Shepard’s always been an early riser. But this morning, he wakes before her, and watches the naked curve of her tangled in the sheets. He curls himself against her, and she hums a half-asleep note of comfort. He thinks of all the things in the universe that had to happen to bring her back into his arms, and then he falls back asleep with her body against his.


	6. Chapter 6

                A lifetime ago, before the Cerberus missiles took out the first Normandy, they’d worried together about keeping things secret. But there’s no keeping secrets when the Commander and Major are missing all morning and show up together at lunchtime looking sleep-dazed. Years have passed and everyone knows better than to question Shepard at this point, and the day passes uneventfully.

                Still, at the next poker night, James doesn’t hesitate to tease Kaidan mercilessly. Kaidan drinks his beer and watches the cards and he wins every single one of Vega’s chips. Afterward, he takes the elevator to the captain’s quarters. Shepard is in the shower, and he climbs in beside her and kisses her with boozy lips. She teases him for liking shitty beer and then she presses herself close, slick and soapy. Her chin is on his shoulder and she hums a note of contentment, her sudsy fingertips drawing lazy lines up and down the curve of his spine.

                It feels like a dream, and after years of nightmares he can’t bring himself to think that this could ever end. He holds her close and he mumbles _oh, Commander,_ his voice low and sonorous on the shower tiles. And she teases _oh, Major,_ and slides her hands down lower.

* * *

 

                Then Thessia happens.

                Thessia happens and he sits outside the comm room and listens to Shepard tell her superiors that they didn’t get the catalyst. There is no explanation or excuse. Her voice is broken and small and she has no good news to offer them and no answers to their probing questions.

                Thessia happens and days pass without her appearing at the crew table for a meal. She spends every waking moment submerged in datapads and figures. She crawls into bed after he’s asleep and leaves before he’s awake. In the middle of the night, he wakes to an empty bed. He wanders the ship in pajamas and bare feet with bleary eyes until he hears her, in the cargo bay, on the old treadmill. Her feet beat away at the rubber track and he hears the acceleration and knows she is thinking about just _how much faster_ she would’ve had to be to catch Kai Leng on Thessia.

                But he knows Shepard, and he knows how she works. So he leaves her alone to pound her regrets into the old treadmill, and he goes back to bed.

                In the morning, when he wakes, she is still beside him in bed, though she’s been awake for some time. She doesn’t say anything, just inches closer to him. He wraps her in his arms and holds her in silence. At some point he falls asleep, and when he wakes she is gone again. He dresses and goes to the crew deck to find her at the breakfast table, laughing with her crew.

                He sits beside her and she takes his hand in hers under the table, and squeezes, just once.

* * *

 

                The reapers are moving and the citadel, too. The past few months are catching up and he can feel the time ticking away from him. The Normandy heads for Earth. He thinks of apple trees and shining seas and his mother’s kitchen table. He thinks of an end to everything they’ve been fighting. He tries, hard, to think of something after the end, of living through what is to come next.

                She is busy all the time with her datapads and her maps and her plans. Still, he finds an excuse to stop by her quarters with a bottle of wine. Her shoulders are tense and her eyes wander back to her screens even as he begs her to stop working. Finally, with more than a little cajoling, she does.

                He pours the wine. She smiles at him like starlight, something beautiful and distant. By the light of the fish tank, he watches her shoulders relax and her eyes soften.

                They make it through half a glass each before she is on top of him, her mouth on his. He kisses her and he sings her praises and he tries so hard to tell her everything will be fine, but it is a lie and the words won’t come. Instead he just says _it’ll be what it’ll be_ , and she kisses him and does not press for more.

* * *

 

                They watch Earth growing closer, standing side by side on the starboard observation deck. She leans her forehead against the window and watches the planet come into focus; a dot, a sphere, continents and oceans and sparkling explosions of reaper fire. Their home planet, still miles away, flickers and fights beneath them. Beside him, she says nothing, but she closes her eyes and takes his hand, and he thinks _one last time_.

                He watches the outline of North America slip by. The big cities are smothered by black clouds that curl across the globe for miles. He watches the eastern edge of Canada slinking past, beneath wisps of smoke, tracing down the coastline. The ship continues in orbit and the continent disappears, revealing the sprawling Atlantic, the Irish coast, a blackened sky over England, smoke tendrils stretching past borders.

                Explosions bloom like bright night flowers and it’s a fireworks show, just for them, here at the end of their world. The Earth burns and Kaidan’s stomach turns to ice, but Shepard squeezes his hand and still he thinks _what luck, this life of mine._


	7. Chapter 7

He watched her on Virmire, and on the grounded Normandy before Ilos, and after Thessia. Still, this is the first time he’s seen her desperation turn to despair. London is a burnt out husk and the enemies are never-ending. Over the comm systems, they hear allies go silent, one after the other. They stop talking, after a time, and just keep firing at each new monstrosity that charges toward them.

                He catches a break to reload, and looks at Shepard across the battlefield. Her face is sweaty under her visor, and there is fear in her eyes. Her breath comes heavy through her open mouth and she looks more tired than he’s ever seen her.

                Still, she keeps moving forward, plunging through the smoldering streets. Kaidan follows his commander, keeping up cover fire as she moves. It seems like hours before they reach the transport beam to the citadel. They fall out of formation, the gunfire stops for the first time, and Shepard and her crew start to run for it on heavy legs.

                And then Harbinger comes over the horizon, and lands with a rumble that could split the ground open. Kaidan watches Shepard hesitate for a split second and then sees her run even harder, sprinting for the conduit, like on the old treadmill after Thessia a lifetime ago. This is their one chance and Shepard is taking it and Kaidan is behind her, running as fast as he can, and he’s shouting _don’t stop for anything, Shepard,_ one of a dozen voices crying out telling each other to _run_ , and then Harbinger begins to glow and hum. He can’t run fast enough but he’s sure as hell going to try, and still Shepard is faster than him, two steps ahead, three, five—

                And then Harbinger unleashes a beam of fire and heat and the air cracks like thunder; he watches bodies around him tumble and snap like skinny old tree trunks, and everything is so, so loud before it is bleached into ear-ringing silence. The world is bright and hot, it’s a million degrees and his eyes are watering from the light of it, and suddenly he can’t see Shepard ahead of him anymore, can’t see anything ahead of him anymore, he’s on the ground and his legs aren’t listening to him. Slowly, slowly, the world fades back into dark greys and the sounds of battle, and he watches soldiers rise unsteadily to their feet while others stay on the ground, unmoving. He’s able to push himself to his feet and look around _,_ look for Shepard, somewhere in this mess.

                His heart skips when he sees her, a short distance away, rising to her feet . There are half a dozen bodies around her. Blood drips from her elbows, and whole plates of her armor have shattered and fallen off, but still she rises, a burning sun, a crashing tide.

                She turns and looks for him, her eyes dazed but her jaw set, and when she finds him staring back from the rubble she shouts—he strains to listen, his ears still ringing—and she shouts again into the comm system, _I need an evac_. She is running back, away from the conduit.

                His legs give out again, and he realizes she is running to him. He raises a hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead and his glove comes away bloodied. She is next to him, heaving his weight across her shoulders and helping him back to his feet, and behind them he hears the Normandy tearing through the air toward them. He thinks _no, no, no,_ as Shepard rushes him onto the ship, as they move away from the beam, as she tries to send him away to safety, away from her.

                And he begs her, _please don’t leave me behind—_

                And she cradles his skull, the ache of it in her hand, and says _I love you_ , fire in her voice—

                And all he can say is _I love you too_ , because he can’t tell her to stay and he can’t run after her. She squeezes his hand, so gentle here in all this brutality, and he whispers _be careful_ as he watches her turn from him and run toward the reaper.

                His stomach lurches as the Normandy leaves the ground. As they leave London behind, he hears Harbinger fire again, and he is not surprised when they lose contact with Shepard.

* * *

 

                He goes to the starboard observation deck before the med bay, despite the crew’s protests. Alone in front of the window, he watches the reapers crumble and burn, one by one. He watches the allied ships run out of enemies to fire upon. And he watches the Citadel, knowing that Shepard is there, as the station ignites and explodes, before the pain finally hits and brings him to his knees.


	8. Chapter 8

                When he wakes in the med bay, they tell him they escaped through the mass relay. And then they tell him the mass relays have been damaged, and they have lost communications with Earth and the Citadel. And then they say, _we know Shepard was on the citadel when it blew_.

                They tell him these things one by one in the moments he is awake. It feels like a dream, waking to swimming faces and sympathetic voices. He is not sure if anyone ever tells him, explicitly, that Shepard is dead, but he sees the looks in the eyes of his crewmates each time before he sinks back into unconsciousness.

* * *

 

                They are in a holding pattern, Joker says. _Did you ever try to fly into Heathrow airport? Once spent three hours in a holding pattern there on a civilian flight._ Kaidan almost answers that he’s never been to London, but realizes it isn’t true anymore. The mass relays aren’t working but there are ships out there, they can see, nearby council species taking things apart and putting them back and hoping the relay will fire again.

                Kaidan is finally out of the med bay and sitting around the galley table with his crew. The engineers had come up earlier with new name plates for the memorial wall, one for Anderson, one for Shepard. Now, the name plates sit face up on the table, among a sea of half-filled glasses and bottles of every kind of liquor on the ship.

                Some of them are reminiscing, sharing old memories in exchange for shallow laughter. Tali is weeping softly, her masked face in her hands, Traynor rubbing her back and staring at the floor. Kaidan goes through more shots of whiskey than he can count before he finally makes a sound.

                He says, _we don’t know for sure—_

All eyes are on him, everyone wondering who will speak first. Their mouths gape, and he tries again, says _we thought she was dead once before._ He hears the whiskey behind his own voice, but he has to make them understand. _She could still be alive,_ he says, and looks desperately for someone who agrees with him.

                Vega looks at him from across the table, a nearly empty bottle in front of him. His voice drips sympathy as he says _Kaidan, man, don’t do this._ Beside him, Liara tries to take his hand in hers, but he snatches it away, fuming.

                Garrus says, softly, _we know she was on the Citadel and we saw it collapse._

One of the engineers tries to change the subject, mumbles faintly, _remember that time she came back from the Citadel with those fresh rations from Earth and made everyone eat all those jalapeños?_ And someone else laughs, almost as if it were actually funny, and starts their own _remember that time_ …

                Kaidan leaves. No one stops him.

* * *

 

                He goes to her quarters, the bed still a mess from the night before London. Switched off datapads litter the desktop. The overhead lights are off, but the fish tanks are still lit, and he stands in the eerie blue half-light and feels the alcohol swirling in his veins.

                In her quarters, among the model ships and the unworn civilian clothes and the couch she never took a break to sit on, he tells himself that Shepard is dead. He listens to himself slurring the words, and he remembers the sound and the heat of reaper fire and the way the Citadel crumbled as the Normandy escaped. He remembers the night before London, Shepard falling asleep in his arms, and he remembers the sight of her in front of him on the battlefield as he begged, _don’t leave me behind_.

                He leans his forehead against the glass of the aquarium and watches the fish swim, empty eyed and open mouthed. They gape at him for a moment, then swim on. He closes his eyes and feels the coolness of the glass on his skin and he thinks, _Shepard is dead and I am left behind and somebody has to feed her fucking fish_ , and he waits to cry.

                His mouth is dry from the whiskey. He waits, listening to the hum of the water filter. The tears don’t come. Idly, he wonders how many pieces Shepard’s body is in, now, after the explosion.

                He walks without stumbling into Shepard’s bathroom and vomits, twice, into the toilet. Still he does not cry.

                Eventually he crawls into her bed, disturbing the preserved tangle of her bedsheets. He sleeps deeply with his head against her pillows, and all night long he watches the Citadel explode, over and over, in his dreams.

                He wakes, dry-eyed, and wonders when he will believe that Shepard is dead. Then, he feeds the fish.


	9. Chapter 9

                The hangovers ease and the days pass. The Normandy shares what resources it has with the crews working on the mass relay, hoping something will work and somehow, they will get back to Earth. Every night, Kaidan sleeps in the commander’s bed, and every morning, he feeds the fish. He passes crewmates in the halls with tears in their eyes, hears Shepard’s name on their lips, and tries not to hear the way they stop speaking when he approaches.

                He watches life on her ship move on without her, sees the empty places where the Commander should be, and still he does not cry.

                After twelve days, he agrees to hang her name on the memorial wall. Around him, the crew weeps, and he puts his face in his hands and tells himself _Shepard is dead_ and wonders at his own lack of feeling.

* * *

 

                When there is nothing to do, he flicks through the comm channels. The frequency they used on missions, the frequency the alliance used, the frequency the council used. One after the other on loop for hours, hoping anything could make it to this nowhere galaxy at the end of a dead mass relay.

* * *

 

                It is three months before the local comm channels bluster with activity. A dozen voices shout at once, and he listens and listens and tries to hear anything that makes sense until finally someone says the words _mass relay_ , loud and clear.

                They look from the observation decks and the cockpit and every little window on any deck of the Normandy and they see the mass relay, repaired, alight and ready and waiting.

                A turian ship tries it first, an hour later. It flares and spins and the ship disappears, flung away faster than light, and suddenly everyone on the Normandy is chattering about Earth and about _home_. Nobody mentions Shepard’s name, forgotten where it hangs on the wall with the others.

                Joker gets clearance for the Normandy to go next, and Kaidan reminds himself _Shepard is dead_ , and wonders vaguely if they will have missed her funeral when they get to Earth.

* * *

 

                The communication channels are still down, when they come through a mass relay near the Sol system, but Kaidan cycles through them anyway. Garrus speculates that the audio feeds may still be too damaged to transmit at any kind of distance. The crew waits, watching the specks of light in the distance resolve themselves into a familiar solar system.

                They’re not far out when the first message comes through. It’s text only, and with how long it takes to download on the ship’s messaging system there’s no question that Earth’s communication lines are still not back to normal. The crew gathers around Traynor as she finally opens the message and reads it aloud—

                _Normandy—Glad to see you coming home. We’ll be waiting –Hackett_

They wait for more, but nothing arrives, even as they work their way closer to Earth. There are other ships, as they draw closer, Alliance and other council races too, and as the Normandy draws closer they start to receive signals from a docking station on Earth, in London. Joker directs the ship to land, and Kaidan waits on the observation deck and wonders what Earth will be like without Shepard by his side. He watches the world grow large beneath the viewing window, this time without the haze and flames of war, and wonders how many days he will make it before he ends up at his mother’s kitchen table again.

                The ship docks. The airlock equalizes. Kaidan and his crewmates step out, into the docking bay, and even though he knows Shepard is dead he can’t help but look for her in the sea of faces waiting for them. There’s a thousand bodies packed into the docking bay, civilians and Alliance military crowding in to see the heroes’ homecoming. Directly in front of the airlock are Admiral Hackett and a cluster of military personnel, smiling, looking so proud.

                Kaidan looks once, twice, and imagines it is just like the first time Shepard died and he saw her face in every woman he passed. He knows it can’t really be her, standing next to Hackett in a formal uniform with so many goddamn medals and ribbons he can’t even name them all. And then she laughs, and he’s close enough to hear it now, and it sounds like gunfire, and he knows it’s her.

                He is down the ramp and in front of her in an instant; there are new scars on her face and the corners of her eyes crinkle deeper than they used to but she’s smiling, god, so wide, and his own face hurts from smiling back at her. There are shouts and cheers from every direction and he can’t hear a thing but he pulls her close, just to feel her in his arms. He feels the pump of her heart where her breast is flush against his, and hears the whisper of air in her lungs as she breathes near his ear, and thinks of the futures he could never imagine before, _I will get to see your hair turn grey_ and _I will get to see your eyes shining out of my child’s face_ , and it happens then, the tears come and he just holds onto her and _sobs_.

                He feels her shaking in his arms and knows she is crying too. He tries to find words, tries to find something to say to her in this moment, but all he can do is sob and hold her tighter.

                And he says, broken, _oh, Commander._

And in his arms she laughs between the tears and says _oh, Major._


End file.
